Help me figure out what kind of turquoise this is. I did have a person try to tell me it was block but it doesn’t seem to have the characteristics that block should have. I’ve taken multiple pictures, including several of the matrix. Unfortunately my camera tries to pull a more saturated green blue than it actually is. It’s more pastel baby blue Robin’s egg blue. I took magnified pictures of the matrix because I can see the small black dots in the tan matrix. I can feel places with my fingernail where those black dots are where the stone has a pit. Using Google lens gives me choices, but too many choices. Google lens feels like it is possibly Golden hills, number 8 mine from Nevada or from the Kingman mine area.
I can see why someone thought block, because of the flat blue color, but the pitting makes me learn towards real. Google lens is TERRIBLE. I wouldn’t think it would be any of these except maaaaybe Kingman (if it is real turquoise), and I don’t even know about that. You may know this, but it is nearly impossible to say what mine a stone came from without good provenance. Mostly it’s just educated guesswork.
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My husband is a silversmith, and, ultimately, we took it apart because we couldn’t figure it out visually. I knew it was real stone, but not what kind. And he wanted to make sure that it wasn’t really block. So he took it apart so we could do the hot pen, and this is what he found. It appears it is most likely dyed howlite or dyed magnesite.The person who cut and dyed it did a really good job. It has the natural veins and the pits that indicate it’s a real stone. The color- some pieces of turquoise do have that type of color, but, unfortunately, not this one. The channel on the back and the white patches gave it away.
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Good idea. I had not seen any turquoise with the color combo that you had and thought it was likely not turquoise but, I couldn’t put my finger on what it was. Sorry to see that it is not turquoise!
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Channel on the back looks like the cab was 1/2 of a long oval bead at some point. Cutting marks from the saw used to split it are apparent across the rear of the cab.
I’ll add that the pockets in this cab look like air bubbles in a poured composite compound rather than the kinds of voids formed natural stone or mineral of some type. I suspect the material is entirely artificial with the “matrix” being the same material with different colorant swirled in.
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@mmrogers my interpretation is that the channel is where her husband did the hot pin test
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Hmmm. That would definitely be a “fail”. 
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